SHE is only seven years old, but Leigh Safter isn't afraid to say what she thinks about plans to shut down her uncle's day care centre.

The little girl from Golden Hill Farm, Haxby, York, got out a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote to The Press to voice her protest.

She wrote: "Dear Sir or Madame. Please help save Yearsley Bridge because my uncle Robert, who is 30, goes to that day centre and it would be an extremely difficult challenge to find a new one for him."

Today, her grandmother, Linda Allison, insisted the letter was entirely Leigh's doing.

"She wrote it on her own and without being prompted by us," she said. "Leigh has her own mind."

She said that Robert, her stepson, who has severe learning disabilities, attended the Yearsley Bridge day care centre, in Huntington Road, five days a week.

"He loves it there," she said. "One day he will do cooking, another day he will do flower arranging.

"We don't yet know what will happen to him when the centre closes down."

The centre, which is attended each week by about 70 adults with learning disabilities, is set to shut down next year as part of a modernisation by City of York Council.

Bill Hodson, director of adult social services at City of York Council, said today he realised change could be stressful but it was often the only way to improve services.

"We will support people through that change but I believe, ultimately, people will benefit from having a wider choice of services," he said.

"This was the experience when the council closed Hebden Rise Day Centre a couple of years ago.

"There have been many big changes to services for people with a learning disability over recent years, which have meant that people have been able to move out of hospitals and residential homes and have their own tenancies in the community.

"I honestly believe that a better set of services can be provided by moving out of one main building at Yearsley Bridge and designing a range of opportunities across the city.

"That is what we are working on now by talking to people about what they like to do so that we can come back later in the year with some choices about how that can be achieved. Those choices would be much more restricted if we said that everyone had to continue to go to the same building everyday."